Sunday, October 25, 2009

how to treat your lady right

Ant and me at the pumpkin patch.

Ant treating Mel to a night out via motorbike (below).

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Fort Lauderdale: Sadness as this journey draws to a close

Yesterday morning we left Fort Pierce (where we'd anchored the night before) and let me tell you the INLET there was horrendous. I have never been in such rough waters. For half an hour, Delphinus's bow rose into the air about 20 feet and then dropped (crashed is a better word: it wasn't any kind of gentle descent down the crest of a wave, or even a rough descent as such - it was simply dropping, falling, crashing down so we were almost weightless for a nano-second or two) 20 feet, submerging the bowsprit into the water before rearing out of the water again another 20 feet. The waves were almost on top of each other - even Phillip said it was rough, and he NEVER agrees with me about this sort of thing. It lasted about 40 minutes until we were out of the channel - I hung on for dear life, I couldn't let go of the rails for even a second, or else I'd have been tossed around the cockpit like, well, like an idiot on a boat in very rough seas. Worst seas I've ever been in for sure.


We arrived in Fort Lauderdale and anchored in Lake Sylvia (by Port Everglades) at 4 pm this afternoon, exactly four weeks after leaving Annapolis. It was the most wonderful sailing day today - the best I've ever experienced - light winds, gentle seas, the sun shining, a wonderful breeze - just tinged with the slightest melancholy because it means our trip has drawn to a close. This trip, anyway. It was bitter sweet, seeing the familiar coastline, our condo, the restaurant where we met (Sea Watch), our friend Ree's condo, Fort Lauderdale Beach etc. then turning into Port Everglades and seeing the intracoastal waterway, the New River, all our old "stomping grounds", and then finally anchoring in Lake Sylvia. Who knows whether we'll stay in Florida for a while or if we'll be setting sail to foreign lands again, only time will tell.

To be continued......

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Sunday 11th October, arrived Fort Pierce


We motored down Mosquito Lagoon - what wonderful scenery. We put the sail up a couple of times, but mostly the wind was from the south so it didn't help us at all.



It was a huge, beautiful stretch of open water, very deceiving though because the only navigable areas for us (with a keel of 6.5 feet) are about the size of a normal road (single lane either side). You see miles and miles of open water, yet if you deviate off the plotted chart area even a few feet, you're in very shallow water.






We saw plenty of these magnificent, sort of creepy looking trees along the narrower parts of the ICW, south of Georgia.


Almost home - just two more days and we'll be in Fort Lauderdale.

Stopped in Titusville on the way down - the kind people at the Municipal Dock let us tie Delphinus up there while we went to a great local supermarket (Save a Lot) for provisions - most places charge you for dockage or else insist you buy things from them - they did neither, just offered their kindness to us. As a result, we bought beer, ice-cream, diesel and water from them and thanked them profusely.

We're anchored tonight in Fort Pierce - nice to have some internet for a change - and see the water changing color to blue (from dark green/black). Plenty of dolphins around too! Tomorrow we'll probably do a day-sail on the outside, mainly so Phillip can catch some mahi-mahi. West Palm Beach tomorrow, then Fort Lauderdale Tuesday.

Friday, October 9, 2009

After St. Augustine....

We've motored and anchored here and there, and are now in Smyrna Beach overnight where we can fortunately get some good wi-fi! Tiny anchorage - but as we pulled in, a guy in a tiny little boat with a fishing rod was screaming (with delight) - we turned to see what the fuss was about - he had hooked a HUGE fish and it was towing him along. It was ENORMOUS - probably about 5 feet long. We didn't see how it ended but as always, I hoped it got away. Poor fish. As I tell Phillip, if he ever catches a fish (or a crab or lobster) and puts it in a pail of water on the boat, keeping it alive - I will name that creature, make friends with it and put it back in the water. He knows how I feel about live creatures..... Even in the Caribbean, when we got those lobsters, I had to get Paul to dispatch them - couldn't have them on our boat or else I'd have put them back in the water. When he catches a fish, I take a photo of it with my eyes shut (so usually only get a blurred shot of the fish, or only its tail or head), then I disappear below and let P take care of everything - but I also ask him every time to say something nice about the fish, once it has been dispatched (he sprays alcohol into its gills and the fish just goes to sleep peacefully - none of this awful bashing and beating that a lot of fishermen do, ugh, so cruel) - so he says a few words about each fish i.e. you were a good fish, a kind fish, with lots of friends, and you will be missed. Something like that.

Don't get me wrong, I can eat the fish, but only when it has been wrapped in plastic and no longer resembles anything that's alive. I can't eat anything with a face. But yes, I can fool myself into eating something that came from the supermarket in a plastic-wrapped carton - the two are not related. And I ALWAYS hate seeing lobsters kept in tanks in supermarkets - if I could, I would grab them all and set them free.

Speaking of which, we ate our last two lobster tails last night (the ones we got in Petit St. Vincent in the Grenadines) with some tinned corn and engine-baked potato and butter sauce of course. I've been pleading with P to please make use of the heat the engine gives out - motoring all day long, that engine really gets up to cooking temperatures, so I finally persuaded him to put our one potato that we had left in the engine and let it bake. We wrapped it up in tin foil of course, wedged it in tightly, and let her sit for a couple of hours while we motored, and guess what - the PERFECT baked potato! Yum! Now we're wondering how we can rig up some baking trays down there - we can bake and cook all day long without using our propane.

Here are some pics of the foggy mornings we've been seeing. This morning we could hardly see the bridge! We knew it was there, but where?






It's very very hot and humid - at night there isn't a puff of air, and if anyone's been to Florida in mid summer and spent some time without air conditioning, they'll appreciate how hot and sticky you can get. Hottest we've had on this trip - well into the hundreds. Oh well.

Tuesday 6th - arriving St. Augustine and leaving on the 7th

We arrived in St. Augustine about 3 pm, shortly before a massive thunderstorm - dolphins were abundant, and once we'd anchored, just north of Bridge of Lions, I watched them play, jumping out of the water, rolling over, really having a whale of a time (no pun intended). Phillip got to work on the dingy engine, but still no luck. It's such a simple engine - fuel, compression and spark are the three things that make a dingy work, and all three were peachy - so it was obviously something more serious. Not having a dingy is pretty serious as you can't go ashore anywhere without paying to dock in a marina. The following morning we went through Bridge of Lions, and anchored just south of the bridge where P found an engine repair guy who hauled the motor away (we had to dock at the Municipal Downtown Marina and Fuel Dock to fill up with diesel and water) and $180 later, returned the sad verdict that the powerhead had cracked, it would cost almost $1000 plus labour for a new one (not worth it - you can get a new one for that price), so we docked at the Marina again (they were very kind to let us do this), picked up the dead engine and decided to leave St. Augustine. There really was no point in staying - we couldn't go ashore, although it looked like one of the loveliest towns on the trip, and no point in getting a new motor/engine there because they are few and far between and very expensive.

So we left, escorted away by dolphins again. Funny that - we've seen tons more dolphins on the ICW than we did in the Caribbean! AND we also saw an alligator - probably about 5 foot long, we motored right past him, he didn't try to swim away or anything - just lay there looking at us - like he was waiting to cross the road and was pausing to let the traffic go by - and once we'd gone by him, he swam to the other side of the river. Amazing!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Heading to St. Augustine - Tuesday 6 October

After taking shelter in Fernandina Beach, Florida, we slept for a few hours and then decided to leave, simply because the smells from the factories were awful and the sights were too depressing for words. We only motored about 2 hours, did a bit of channel dredging (the chart pointed out an anchorage in what was supposed to be 12 feet of water, but was only 5 and a half - we draw a 6.5 foot keel, so dredging was the order of the day). Anyway, we didn't (couldn't) use that anchorage but chose one that wasn't on the chart - a really lovely, open water anchorage with nobody around for miles, just the occasional mosquito and midge, the cry of the birds and every now and then the sigh of dolphins breaking the water. Life is good!

Sunset! A steak on the grill, a nice glass of wine... ahhh... NOW I remember why I'm here.


Woke up to a very wonderful, foggy morning.
I LOVE fog - obviously Phillip doesn't, not when it's time to start moving - had to put on our running and navigation lights it was so thick. Doesn't show up well in the photos, I took plenty but they just look like under exposed shots - so I didn't put those in, just some of these when the fog started lifting. The scenery probably looks the same to everyone (boring maybe?), but in person, it was just wonderful.









It cleared up after a while - some beautiful scenery, probably some of the nicest we've seen.


Beaufort, South Carolina down to Fernandina Beach, FL (4th - 5th Oct)

We spent one night in Beaufort - they were having their annual shrimp festival, lots of little booths with fried goodies everywhere, stalls with jewellery, paintings etc,. the normal wares for a street fair. We walked around and had a milkshake, glad to get out of the roasting heat and humidity, and Phillip took me back to the boat. He wanted to go to West Marine, so set off in the dingy, only to return 20 minutes later, being towed by some kind passersby - the dingy engine had seized. Nothing he could do it seemed to help, and he's very good with engines, he can normally fix just about anything. There are not many boat services in Beaufort, so we hoisted the dingy onto the deck and left Beaufort, SC on Sunday 4th October. We stopped off at Port Royale Marina and Fuel Dock to fill up with diesel, took a stroll to West Marine and Piggly Wiggly (supermarket) and then headed out of the Port Royale Sound, surrounded by literally a hundred dolphins - it was wonderful.



Forecast was for about 6 knots of wind up to 12 knots of wind, and a nice gentle sail to St. Augustine, Florida. Of course that was not to be. At about 9 pm the winds started picking up, I started feeling lousy (I seem to feel seasick the minute the sun goes down) so went below and lay there in pain and misery, feeling the seas get higher and higher and the wind get faster and faster. I felt like I was in one of those large commercial washing machines, although this one was tilted at an angle. The drone of the engine right outside our cabin didn't help either! Our "bedroom"'s outside "wall" follows the curve of the boat, so it's not straight up and down, but goes up at a gentle curve. I positioned myself right in the crack between this curved wall and the mattress, where it's the most snug and you are most secure, not being rolled around like you would if you were just lying on the mattress, and the boat was heeled over so much that I ended up with more of my back on the wall than on the actual bed, if you can picture that. The boat shuddered and gyrated, I got up a couple of times to see how we were doing, but it was a supreme effort so after doing that twice, I gave up. The only thing for me was to just lie there and let this bucking bronco do what she had to do. I would have taken photos of the portholes (under water because the boat was on it's ear) but it was too much of an effort to even lift my arm. Ugh. At about 3 am, Phillip came below to tell me that the wind was directly from the south (on the nose), and that at this rate, we wouldn't get to St. Augustine for another 24 hours, so he recommended turning in to Fernandina Beach, Fl, 18 miles away (still a good 4 hours for us). So that's what we did - but it was still a very rough time - we didn't enter the channel until about 7.30 because it was still dark, overcast, raining and windy and with an unknown port, it's not the wisest thing to enter it in the dark. Anyway, I surfaced about 7.30 am, my eyes wild, my hair in such a state, with so many well formed nests that even the pickiest weaver bird wife would have been impressed, and clung on in the cockpit getting some lovely fresh sea air until we entered the Cumberland Sound. The tide was going in, so we averaged 8.8 knots (for us that's lightning fast) and motored the short distance to this awful industrial looking town (Fernandina Beach), which is at mile marker 717. There are two huge factories (paper I think) on the water, nestled inbetween which is a cute looking town - but the smells and sights of the factories are such a turn off.





Having said that, we were thrilled to be in peace and quiet - Phillip feeling tired after being up the whole night, me exhausted from clinging to life in my cabin all night (I'm entitled to be a bit of a drama queen at this point), feeling awful - so we anchored and went to bed. Still nothing on any of the weather channels about rough winds out there - they still say there are 6 knots of wind everywhere - wait until I get my hands around that fella's neck who reads the forecasts (probably an automated voice).

Tomorrow, Tuesday 6th October, we'll probably motor on the ICW to St. Augustine. I just couldn't face going out to sea again, not just yet. Remind me why I'm here, someone, please?